As everyone knows, legacy media outlets have had a famously hard time merging their traditional values and processes with the traffic-driving demands of the Web economy. But we’re trying! In the name of full transparency, here’s a confidential internal email circulated by Washington City Paper‘s web programming czar, Will Atwood Mitchell, with some pointers for colleagues on how to take advantage of this holiest of all holy click-generating days:

From: Will Atwood Mitchel

To: In House Editorial

Date: Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 12:32 AM

Subject: Confidential Internal Memo: iPhone 5 release & SEO

 

Everyone:

The Apple iPhone 5 Media Event is tomorrow (Tuesday). In order to get as many pageviews as possible, please put the word “iPhone” in the title of EVERY story you write today. It doesn’t matter whether it’s relevant or not! Don’t worry, it’s just SEO! We’ll be counting your posts at the end of the day.

Thanks,

Will